"Historians are Being Asked to Spin Simple Stories" Topic

…of Nationalism; The Past Won't Cooperate

"North Macedonia, an EU candidate since 2005, and Bulgaria, an EU member since 2007, are neighbors that have several commonalities in terms of history and culture. Despite the commonalities, in recent years commemorations and public memory have increasingly led to bitterness between the two nations, including political threats and even physical altercations at various sites of memory. Bulgarian perspectives over North Macedonia's history and culture present a major roadblock for the latter's EU membership, as well as general stability in the Balkan region, which was once considered to be a European powder keg. This is all because of attempts to simplify and revise a very complex history that requires patience, open-ended questions, deconstruction of well-established national myths, and careful conclusions.

On February 4, 2023, the celebration of the birthday of revolutionary intellectual Goce Delchev takes place in Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia. Delchev was the hero of the struggle for the Macedonian region's independence from Ottoman rule in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but he and the struggle that he represents are also highly valued and celebrated in neighboring Bulgaria, which considers Delchev and most revolutionaries of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (VMRO), to be theirs in terms of ethnicity and nationality…"

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Armand

Interesting article.
I guess they finally got their problems with Greece worked out by becoming NORTHERN Macedonia, rather than just Macedonia. And there was that brief period when we had to remember the acronym FYROM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia).

Grelber

Glad you enjoyed it…

Armand